BERLIN (MNI) – Germany aims to lower federal net new borrowing next
year to E35 billion, Norbert Barthle, the parliamentary budget policy
speaker of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc, said in a newspaper
interview published Wednesday.
For the current year, federal net new borrowing is to be lowered to
E40 billion from the E48.4 billion earmarked in the 2011 budget bill,
Barthle told regional daily Rheinische Post.
The Bundesbank said on Monday that it expects federal net new
borrowing in 2011 to be markedly below the budget projection. The
central bank pointed to the pick-up in tax revenue and a lower interest
rate burden as reasons for its optimism.
Federal tax revenue rose 11.0% on the year in January, but the
result was distorted to the upside due to lower contributions to the EU
than a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said on Monday. For the full
year, the government’s tax estimate commission forecast in November a
tax revenue drop of 0.2%.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; twidder@marketnews.com
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